Herrnstein’s famous 1971 article in The Atlantic

Had been looking for this one for years. Gwern managed to find it. I’ll host a mirror here.

Perhaps the most interesting thing about the article is the introduction written by the editors. It ends thus:

The Jensen report (as this article has come to be miscalled} dealt with intelligence and inheritance in general, not only with racial questions. Other writers in the past four centuries – from Thomas Hobbes to Konrad Lorenz- have agonized over the complex and fascinating interplay of nature and nurture in shaping man’s psyche. It is only lately in America that public discussion requires physical, not to mention intellectual, courage, for the subject is close to taboo. But The Atlantic believes that it is not only possible but necessary to have public discussion of important, albeit painful, social issues. The subject of intelligence is such an issue – important because social legislation must come to terms with actual human potentialities, painful because the actualities are sometimes not what we vainly hope.

Now a days, we have to go to specialist magazines, like Quillette, to find such an editorial approach.

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